This is a special post for quick takes by Benjamin M.. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Are there any organizations out there that would describe their niche as advising for small/medium-sized donors? I can't think of any, and I'm wondering why not. I'm not exactly sure what organizations that claim to advise large donors actually do, but it seems plausible that some things are also effective for smaller donors just because there are larger numbers of those. I'm thinking of, for instance:
tl;dr is (1) a lot of evaluators will do this for their cause area (can't speak to every one but Giving Green is happy to advise donors of any size, just shoot us an email); (2) look into giving circles inside or outside EA
I'd add that it's probably worth seeking a financial advisor for the tax law and will writing type questions -- a lot of EA advisories offer free initial services, but I've been told that total assets >100k is generally the point at which it makes sense to find an advisor
I wrote up something for my personal blog about my relationship with effective altruism. It's intended for a non-EA audience - at this point my blog subscribers are mostly friends and family - so I didn't think it was worth cross posting as I spend a lot of time trying to explain what effective altruism is exactly, but some people might still be interested. My blog mostly is about books and whatnot, not effective altruism, but if I do write some more detailed stuff on effective altruism I will try to post it to the forum also.
There's probably something that I'm missing here, but:
Given that the dangerous AI capabilities are generally stated to emerge from general-purpose and agentic AI models, why don't people try to shift AI investment into narrower AI systems? Or try to specifically regulate those systems?
Possible reasons:
This is harder than it sounds
General-purpose and agentic systems are inevitably going to outcompete other systems
People are trying to do this, and I just haven't noticed, because I'm not really an AI person
General-purpose and agentic systems are inevitably going to outcompete other systems
There's some of this: see this Gwern post for the classic argument.
People are trying to do this, and I just haven't noticed
LLMs seem by default less agentic than the previous end-to-end RL paradigm. Maybe the rise of LLMs was an exercise in deliberate differential technological development. I'm not sure about this, it is personal speculation.
Do you like SB 1047, the California AI bill? Do you live outside the state of California? If you answered "yes" to both these questions, you can e-mail your state legislators and urge them to adopt a similar bill for your state. I've done this and am currently awaiting a response; it really wasn't that difficult. All it takes is a few links to good news articles or opinions about the bill and a paragraph or two summarizing what it does and why you care about it. You don't have to be an expert on every provision of the bill, nor do you have to have a group of people backing you. It's not nothing, but at least for me it was a lot easier than it sounded like it would be. I'll keep y'all updated on if I get a response.
Both my state senator and my state representative have responded to say that they'll take a look at it. It's non-commital, but it still shows how easy it is to contact these people.
Are there any organizations out there that would describe their niche as advising for small/medium-sized donors? I can't think of any, and I'm wondering why not. I'm not exactly sure what organizations that claim to advise large donors actually do, but it seems plausible that some things are also effective for smaller donors just because there are larger numbers of those. I'm thinking of, for instance:
there was a post about this last year: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oFcLqTETnC8rajxeg/advisors-for-smaller-major-donors
tl;dr is (1) a lot of evaluators will do this for their cause area (can't speak to every one but Giving Green is happy to advise donors of any size, just shoot us an email); (2) look into giving circles inside or outside EA
I'd add that it's probably worth seeking a financial advisor for the tax law and will writing type questions -- a lot of EA advisories offer free initial services, but I've been told that total assets >100k is generally the point at which it makes sense to find an advisor
Can you define the class of "small/medium-sized donors" you have in mind? That means different things to different people.
I was being purposely kind of vague, but let's say people donating <100k a year? Whatever's too small for the organizations that advise large donors.
I wrote up something for my personal blog about my relationship with effective altruism. It's intended for a non-EA audience - at this point my blog subscribers are mostly friends and family - so I didn't think it was worth cross posting as I spend a lot of time trying to explain what effective altruism is exactly, but some people might still be interested. My blog mostly is about books and whatnot, not effective altruism, but if I do write some more detailed stuff on effective altruism I will try to post it to the forum also.
There's probably something that I'm missing here, but:
Possible reasons:
Which is it?
There's some of this: see this Gwern post for the classic argument.
LLMs seem by default less agentic than the previous end-to-end RL paradigm. Maybe the rise of LLMs was an exercise in deliberate differential technological development. I'm not sure about this, it is personal speculation.
Do you like SB 1047, the California AI bill? Do you live outside the state of California? If you answered "yes" to both these questions, you can e-mail your state legislators and urge them to adopt a similar bill for your state. I've done this and am currently awaiting a response; it really wasn't that difficult. All it takes is a few links to good news articles or opinions about the bill and a paragraph or two summarizing what it does and why you care about it. You don't have to be an expert on every provision of the bill, nor do you have to have a group of people backing you. It's not nothing, but at least for me it was a lot easier than it sounded like it would be. I'll keep y'all updated on if I get a response.
Both my state senator and my state representative have responded to say that they'll take a look at it. It's non-commital, but it still shows how easy it is to contact these people.